Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.

In big houses in which things are done properly, there is always the religious element. The diurnal cycle is observed with more feeling when there are servants to do the work.

Almost everyone admits to hunger during the Opera.... Hunger is so exalting that during a last act you practically levitate.

Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.

Each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant; impossible socially, but full scale; and it's the knockings and battering we sometimes hear in each other that keep our banter from utter banality.

One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or, worse still, when one betrays them does one realize their power.

When I read a story, I relive the moment from which it sprang. A scene burned itself into me, a building magnetized me, a mood orseason of Nature's penetrated me, history suddenly appeared to me in some tiny act, or a face had begun to haunt me before I glanced at it.